Blissfully Beautiful Book Covers: Pulp! The Classics

Following an interview I did recently for the lovely Linda Parkinson-Hardman – a Woman on the Edge of Reality and of Hysteria Writing Competition fame, I realised that I do actually tend to judge a book by its cover. Perhaps I need to quantify ‘judge’ in that I tend to be drawn to a certain type of book cover, rather than I ‘judge’ the contents inside by what’s outside (that’d simply make me shallow, surely? And thence comes another great name for a character – ‘Shallow Shirley’. Am I digressing? Of course I am.)

This week I received a pre-publication book for review from the lovely people at ‘Real Readers’ – which I’ve already started and which I will post a review for here and on Amazon – as per the agreement. And with the book came a catalogue of books from publishers Oldcastle Books which included the series of Pulp! The Classics books in the image above. Seeing covers like these gives me a pure spark of delight and so I fell in love with these immediately.

I particularly love the Pride and Prejudice cover with a surly Colin Firth in his finery with a fag hanging out of his sneer and the one of a hippy Judy Garland on the Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is my absolute favourite.

Mr T as Othello? Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor as the startcrossed Romeo and Juliet and Humphry Bogart pulling off the best Heathcliff ever – priceless! And if you can tell me who the ‘Three Men in A Boat’ are (are they all the same man?) I’d be grateful.

Maybe I just love Anything Alice, as Mr Cooper also appears on the cover of Jekyll and Hyde – one of him in all his usual weirdness and the other swinging a golf club – and there begs the question ‘which Alice is which?’ 😉

I love the colours and I love the whole reinventivness of the original covers (the story’s the same, word for word within) and the sprayed coloured edges just add to the excellence of the whole idea. I shall be putting a couple of these on my Christmas wish list, but I’d much prefer a framed cover to hang on the walls near the bookcases. Love. Love. Love.